The callous treatment meted out to Dvorzac by guards at Harmondsworth detention centre was shocking. But it was not surprising. Abuses of the vulnerable in detention are
not unusual – they are par for the course with excessive border
rules that allow governments to put migrants, who have committed no crime,
behind bars.

Take the scandal that hit Yarlswood detention centre last
October. Detainees complained that staff there took advantage of women detainees, claiming they
would help their immigration case in return for sex. Former detainee Tilia,
described this as commonplace behaviour for guards: ‘having women was part of
their jobs,’ as she put it. Or the case of the G4S guards, operating in a culture of
pervasive racism, who killed Jimmy Mubenga on a deportation flight to Angola.

As Chief Inspector of Prisons Nick Hardwick said in
his report, some of the ‘most vulnerable people in detention’ had been ‘utterly
failed by the system’. The mentally ill – a high proportion given that 85 per
cent of detainees are chronically depressed at any time – and victims of torture should be
released under Home Office guidelines. But this rule is systematically ignored.

That’s why the Gatwick Detainee Support Group found themselves helping a man
with the mental age of 11 who was held in isolation at Brook House detention
centre for six weeks. That’s how come the British government chartered a plane
to deport a mentally ill Nigerian, Isa Muazu, despite a three-month hunger strike.

Britain claims to operate detention centres that are ‘secure
yet humane’. But all the badminton
and Diwali celebrations in the world do not alter the fact that depriving migrants of their freedom – indefinitely in the case of Britain, Australia and US – is a deep injustice.

It’s not lost on the guards, who are careful to keep an iron grip
on their charges’ discontent. Within these centres – hidden from public view, only
accessible to visitors after a biometric vein-scan and not at all to journalists
– anthropologists such as Alexandra Hall have documented the pervasive cultures
of control. In Border Watch, she describes how whispering, looking out of the window or moving too quickly
can all be taken as evidence of defiance.

Melanie Griffiths, who undertook research with detainees in Campsfield
House in Oxfordshire, relates how good behaviour – such as keeping a tidy bedroom – is rewarded
by stars. These might be exchanged for privileges such as a private room, tuck
shop credits. Perks can be taken away again, if detainees argue, become angry, or
refuse a $1.60/ hour job. In the US, detainees’ food is reduced to force
compliance.

In these controlling environments detainees lose
individuality and quickly become institutionalized. And in this dehumanizing, parallel world, a guard is empowered to decide
that a dying, disorientated man is a ‘flight risk’ and must be shackled.

The guards who made the decision to
handcuff the dying in the two cases documented by the HMIP report worked for private
prison operator GEO. It is they who are being hauled over
the coals for this latest outrage. In the same way that G4S guards were
splashed over the news when Jimmy Mbenga died. This can only come as a welcome
relief to the Home Office. They are ultimately responsible,
and yet subcontracting out your dirty work means that you are that little bit less
accountable.

The staff of private prison operators
can also claim to be one step removed from an unsavoury occupation. As the employees of
MITIE were at pains to stress after a sitdown protest against detention in
Campsfield House, the demonstrators were not protesting conditions in detention
– just detention itself. As if they weren’t complicit, in receipt of millions every
year, as the company that detains them.

While the multiplying state and private
players distance themselves, the victims do not change.

And while it continues to be open season on foreigners, abuse is the natural outcome of detention without charge.

Read Hazel Healy's investigation into detention for the Jan/Feb edition of New Internationalist: 'Why are we locking up migrants?'

About the author

Hazel Healy became a co-editor at New Internationalist in 2011. She began her working life as a researcher with Colombian feminists in Medellin, coaxed peas and beans out of the soils of East Manchester with kids, and went on to do advocacy work with refugees from the Congo, Ethiopia and Sudan.

She took up journalism full time in 2007, co-founding online investigative paper Manchester Mule and going on to cover everything from campaigns by Senegalese migrant organizers in Madrid to the trials of Dominican gardeners in New York.

Since joining New Internationalist she has written on food speculation, climate adaptation and digital freedom, and keeps a close eye all things migratory. She also edits the Agenda section of the magazine.

Her work has also been featured in The LA Times, by La Agencia EFE and the Women’s Studies Review.

New Internationalist reports on issues of world poverty and inequality. We focus attention on the unjust relationship between the powerful and the powerless worldwide in the fight for global justice. More about our work